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Latest Google Street View tours explore hot air, taking you inside a volcano & Parliament

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Google’s Street View Trekker system has taken us to some pretty amazing places in the past, but an abseil more than 1,000 feet into the crater of an active volcano has to be the craziest one yet.

We invite you to join us on a journey to the edge of one of the largest boiling lava lakes in the world on the Vanuatuan island of Ambrym. To get  inside  the active volcano, we partnered with explorers Geoff Mackley and Chris Horsley, who repelled 400 meters into the Marum crater with a Street View Trekker collecting 360-degree imagery of the journey down to the molten lava lake, which is roughly the size of two football fields. 

If you prefer to experience your hot air in a more sedate form, Street View has also added a tour of Britain’s Houses of Parliament …


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Latest Google Street View Trekker tour takes us inside the ancient Jordanian city of Petra

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When it comes to ancient cities, they don’t come much more exotic than Petra in Jordan, made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and that’s where Google’s Trekker takes us with its latest Street View imagery. Google handed over its blog post announcing it to Queen Rania of Jordan.

To this day, after too many trips to count, Jordan’s ancient archeological site, the Rose-Red city of Petra, still fills me with awe. Concealed in majestic mountain gorges, visitors can wander through the entire city of Petra, imagining what life was like in the thriving trading center and capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Carved by hand into vibrant red, white and pink sandstone cliffs, it has, miraculously, survived earthquakes to withstand the test of time … 


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Take a virtual walk in Hobbit country with Google’s spectacular New Zealand Street View trek

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The backpack-based Google Trekker tours have taken us to some pretty spectacular places in the past, and the latest addition won’t disappoint. The Street View imagery covers seven of New Zealand’s world-famous ‘Great Walks,’ including some of the settings for the Hobbit movie trilogy … 
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Google Street View now lets you explore the world’s most unusual island: Madagascar

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Madagascar is an island off the coast of Southeast Africa, formed around 88 million years ago, its plants and animals forming in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Over 90% of its wildlife is found only on the island – and you can now take a virtual trip there thanks to the latest Street View imagery from Google’s Trekker system … 
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Enjoy a virtual gondola ride as Google Street View adds Venice to its tours

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I sometimes wonder whether future generations will do most of their travel sat at their PCs, as Google’s Trekker backpack takes us to more and more interesting places. Latest on the list is the romantic Italian city Venice, built on a set of more than 100 small islands, connected by a network of canals and bridges … 
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Watch how Google captures the Canadian Arctic with its Street View Trekker backpack (Video)

Google has been constantly updating its Maps and Google Earth apps with new Street View imagery in recent months. Earlier this month it began rolling out new imagery for famous mountains including Kilimanjaro and Everest, and now Google’s Street View team is hitting Northern Canada for the first time with its Street View Trekker backpacks:

This is the first Trekker expedition in Canada for Google Maps. I’m wearing the backpack to collect Street View imagery as I walk to the shore of Frobisher Bay, where the wind is the strongest and you can see the tide piling up mountains of sea ice. On the way I’ll pass sled dogs tied up outside houses, yapping in anticipation of their next trip. And I may stop to check out an igloo, built by Inuit craftsmen using methods passed down over a millennia.